maya or 3ds max for game design

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Is really 3Ds Max a lot more common than Maya to make a video game? I just want to make sure is this a true fact.
I am been told that 3Ds Max is easier than Maya for making game asset with easier VFX and have a lot easier technical tools that can focus more into making a video game. So far I have used mostly Maya and I have started my first asset chair with 3Ds Max. I think I have learned that 3Ds Max have VFX tools and some technical tools that is much easier than Maya to make a low level simple asset, as soon as you have find out the hidden tools. The 3DS Max hidden tool is like you have to extrude edges only by pressing W in your keyboard for the move tool> select edges> Shift + drag left mouse -or- sometimes need to select Use Selection Center icon instead of select Use Pivot Point Center to resize some vertexs at once. The 3Ds Max user interface have more buttons to make life easier to make a low level simple asset. Meanwhile, I think the Maya user interface have more codings and adding variables required to make a higher quality asset or a rig. I think coding and adding variables focus without too much buttons interface will make a higher quality VFX animation and characters. Because too much simple just press buttons to do everything can distract you from doing more complex stuff. But, having more buttons like in 3Ds Max will make a simple asset much faster.

I believe 3Ds Max interface with more buttons is more for making games, because those buttons can make people work technically with the faster short cuts and can have a cheaper work inside a small indie game with a better purpose. So the game can duplicate more cheap game contents and save more money.
Meanwhile, I believe the Maya interface with less buttons and more need coding and adding variables to be done is more focus to make more high end complex stuff by coding more is required. So, Maya will best fit for making the film movies that needs to be in a higher end to have a successful theatre.

Maybe, you guys should leave me a comment. If my reasoning and my facts is wrong, because I am still first trying out 3Ds Max, meanwhile I am like a middle level in Maya in the industry place.

My chair in 3Ds Max.

(Please, do not copy my B rough idea. Because I like my B rough idea so much.)
Just looking at the prices, £170 per month for max and £210 for maya I'd seriously look into freebie software, unless you can afford those prices. Blender is the quickest, you prototype with one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse. It doesn't cost anything has a ridiculously impressive toolset, works on mac, linux and windows. I could go on but if it was me, as an indie I'd consider learning blender.
Max and maya are really only applicable if you see yourself getting a job, as sadly these are the industry standard.
Why do you care?
Use whatever you're proficient with. Both Maya/Max are owned by the same company.

If you're asking about whether having more buttons makes better modeling software, then I think that best software allows user to remove ALL buttons from screen and work with hotkeys only, without hunting for buttons on the other side of screen. I would say that Maya's UI was much more promising than 3dsmax one - last time I used either of them (which was a long time ago).
Looks like they've crippled a lot of useful tools in LT though ^^
http://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/compare/compare-products

Still even £23 per month is too much when it can be done for free in blender
Thing is, 3D software isn't made for games alone, in fact only a small percentage of it is actually useful for game, mainly modelling and animation. Most of that sort of stuff seems to be there with LT.
$30 a month is definitely worth it for something that's vastly better than blender, but I haven't seen any reason to believe that's the case with either of these tools.

Also, far as I know scripting is off the table with LT versions, so heavy customization (which I've found to be incredibly useful for a 'production line' workflow) is not going to be possible.
Care to mention which features you couldn't live without for game development?
^^ There's loads, PSD support, 2 animation layers (not sure what that means) sculpt support (not sure if that is comparable to blender sculpting?
And even if you're not just restricted to game dev it is useful to use all the other features in some way. No such limitation in blender
The non-LT release supports unlimited. Among other things it's apparently used for blending animations.
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...5C202CB8-EB3C-4ADE-B203-5F93A9FD9104-htm.html

I'm not an artist so I don't know the usefulness of this. Wouldn't Mecanim be where you'd blend animations for Unity?
Yep but it costs more wasn't that the point , I've no idea about mecanim, I animate in blender exclusively.
I forgot to say that 3Ds Max have more modelling tools. Meanwhile, Maya is easier to animate. To be honest my game development teacher and some students told me that 3Ds Max is made to make games better than Maya. But I am not so sure why they all say so.

Last edited: Sep 18, 2016
I don't limit my self to one tool.
I use 3Ds max, ZBrush for all my modeling. Depending what I am doing I'll use a different tool.
I hear Maya is better for animations, but I am perfectly content with my Max being I grew up on GMax (The old school free version of 3ds max). Don't bother getting it even though it's free, it doesn't have fbx or obj exporting I don't believe.

But anywho. Use tools for the purpose and what you better understand for what you're trying to do.
No two tools are alike,even if they do the exact same thing. Each offer different workflows.

So choose the tools you're comfortable working with and which is better suited for the task at hand.
I think I was kind of right, because I searched in this forum and they said there is many more people who uses 3Ds Max with games instead of making films. And 3Ds Max can make asset faster like what I have find out from before.
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/game-making-forum/maya-vs-max-for-gaming/td-p/4166128
And in this forum they said 3Ds Max is more for games, meanwhile Maya is more for films.
https://www.cryengine.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=284&t=81303&start=15
Again, there's no right or wrong tool.... They are both very very powerful. Now which workflow is more productive for YOU is the answer to what is the right tool...
If something is more powerful but takes me twice as long to model something, I'd rather go with the less powerful if I can finish it in half the time.
AFAIK maya used to have a much better animation toolset, maybe the gap has been bridged somewhat, I don't know never used it. Still, if you've been weened on 3dmax you're going to have a hard time switching to blender, so unless you free your mind your fate is pretty much sealed.
@N1warhead cost also determines which toolset you are to use.
@computertech the speed of modelling judging by your picture could be achieved by pushing vertices for the chair frame itself.
The chair itself could be made with a low poly mesh and subdividing or sculpting then retopoing. Maybe using nurbs though I've never used them.
For my 3Ds Max chair model, my classmate and I also rather prefer a very low poly mesh as much as possible, because adding more faces to render out a higher quality textures inside my chair that looks like a piece of blob will might be too hard for me. Although I think my chair will have a lot of triangles, meanwhile I am trying to have more quads instead. My chair is still work in progress. I am still rather thinking should I add smooth edges into some of my chair edges.
I usually use Maya more. Until my game development teacher forces me to use 3Ds Max. So in Maya, you should always use polygon mesh type of object instead of nurbs object, because sometimes nurbs object cannot be render out with mental ray rendering options. And sometimes the nurbs object will goes wrong when the faces and edges is like out of place like it does not work as smoothly. I think in maya nurbs object can allow to add in some kind of a specific variables attributes to it like that nurbs object can open up or adding a moving textures. But, I barely use that specific nurbs variable attributes.
I think you've missed the word Blender in this post ....................................
@OP
Just use the tools you feel comfortable with. If it's 3DS Max, use it. If it's Maya, use it.
In my experience, If you are looking an extreme photorealistic game where surface reflections run nicely in a hi complex model, then Maya is more what you are looking for. In 3DMax is not possible to make for example Ferrari and sell it as a Ferrari because do not use the correct tools for modelling curves in a powerful way. If you want that the reflection on the surface run perfectly for a 2020 game AAA+ then you need more power as for example Alias or Rhino to achieve the same realistic result of for example a car. This means a lot of modeling people with big skills back there. And then pass the mesh model to your favorite 3D game polygon editor as for example Maya, Max, Blender, etc..But only the case as for example StarCityzen or a CarRace simulation. In all other cases, I'm not the correct person to guide you.
Just use what your comfortable with. Just keep in mind Maya Lt removes almost all of what makes maya a great 3d package. And that if you use blender it makes it really hard to collaborate with other people due to it no following some standards.
Blender can do the same things Maya can, plus it has better workflow.
The only problem with blender is the file formats.
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$10.00 contest CONTEST
How does Blender be the same level as Maya? When Maya cost like $1400 vs. a non profit free Blender. Do you mean Maya LT vs. Blender? The real Maya have a way better and smoother workflow than Blender in 3d to do more difficult task. But, the only good thing about Blender is the best completely free video editing software. You can change Blender into a video editing mode. I only use Blender for the free video editing software, because my old macbook pro is outdated and I cannot find a older version final cut pro that I can download. Because, my outdated macbook pro cannot download the newer version final cut pro.
S***ty file support, bad UI/UX design, and it handles things like split normals in a really non standard way that is not translatable to other 3d pacakges, also some features of it just suck dealing with vertex colour and weight painting / skinning in blender is way more difficult and less precise then it should be. Now not to be a complete downer it does have some really solid core modeling tools, and the lscm uv unwrapping algorithm it uses is very very good for unwrapping organic shapes.
Also once you learn the hotbox, marking menus and keys of maya it is dam fast to work with. Also keep in mind the non standard way blender support hard edges, and blenders license not allowing it to use the fbx sdk and fully support fbx makes it really hard to collaborate with others while using blender.
Since GEOS 3D for Commodore, It depends on what kind of 3D model you are making, your spirit and your skills. Is it a building, an industrial screw, a car, a dragon face, a Landscape, a cloud smoke, or a simple generic 3d gaming model? If you learn blender first then you can jump to other 3d software. But if you learn other 3D soft and then try to learn Blender, then you can be in a real big problem; Is like "The Cube" film! blender Is not a simple UI software and can cover a lot of task with the incorrect keys. This is because Blender is the best example of free software with the worst interface ever made in the history of 3D software. But is overall a multi-tool software where you can build nicely and good content from start to end for professional games or 3D printers. is the new Max. If you learn the keys will be also fast. And it will continue growing and improving.
In the other hand, Maya is much faster than Blender for a pro because of the great original idea of Alias making menu. But has modeling limitations for a class A pro modeler because is more for... games, animation, and kind of copy from Max the spirit for building polygons. Is a split branch from Alias: the father from where it Inherited the 3d mesh tools. Is a private very expensive software (in the 90' 70.000 USD including the Indigo so max was much cheaper and popular) that will be constantly split in many other software, each software will make well (but not perfect because of its old bugs) only one task and will be expensive! Very expensive. Maya is an incomplete Alias version. MayaLt is an incomplete Maya. So if you can afford multiple software (alias maya zbrush painter) and then update them all each 3/5Yr, then Maya plane is probably one of the best solutions. Max was more popular because was good enough, cheaper (for a professor budget low poly content) than Alias then Maya and there was Max pirate versions that run in a Pc [ Alias was only for Silicon]. Max develop specific for games earlier than Maya and is more for low poly close surface content. Maya is a bit more industrial, film and Max is more for soft game shapes.
In my case I prefer the combination of Rhino/Grasshopper --> Blender --> Painter if is a friendly Blender team for making games. Unity accept Blender FBX. And I use Alias --> Maya --> Painter for working in a competitive Maya team environment. And Alias for NURBS industrial extream 3d content. Max for Architecture files. But remember, Alias or Maya are old buggy software well-done pay plan, born in capitalism, with professional pay courses in a hi very aggressive competitive community envirement and Bender is one all terrain kind always young new soft, to develop, free spirit, no competition, more common union of free contribution, born in communism, full of free tutorial where you can improve the soft together [with same limitations] that has that tools you was mentioning in Max. Autodesk Maya, 3D Studio Max or Blender are only the middle man between a specific Cad(CATIA, Sketchup,Alias,ZBrush,Rhino,Cad,Mudbox,Terragen,etc) and the painter soft as for example Substance Painter (Mari?,etc). So for a beginner better to start with Blender and then go for Max then Maya (for learning using curves) unless you know you will be part of a AAA Maya team. Treehouse has a nice fast pay course about MayaLt and Unity.

Last edited: Sep 19, 2016
Blender is a great option for learning 3d since the cost of entry is free.
But it's just an option. No AAA game or movie studio uses Blender for anything significant because there are better options. The nice thing about Blender is it can do just about anything, and proponents of Blender will tell you it can do what just about any other 3d program (and some 2d programs) can do. They're not wrong but Blender isn't necessarily the best at those things, or the fastest, or the easiest to use with other applications.

The reality is no professional studio uses just one application to do 3d. For example I work at a small game studio and we use 3dsmax primarily, but also Maya, 3d Coat, Mudbox, Zbrush, Roadkill, many proprietary tools, and yes even Blender. We use the tool that's best for the job or "best" for a specific individual for a specific job.

As for 3ds max being for games and Maya being for film, this is kind of true and kind of isn't true. There have been times when either programs have been marketed specifically at one industry or the other, and the developers of those applications perhaps internally focusing on features they think would benefit one industry over the other, but that hasn't stopped either industry from using both during those times.

I also know of professional game studios that mainly use Softimage, or Modo, or Houdini, or Cinema 4D, or Lightwave ... for them these programs worked best for their needs, or were programs the enjoyed using over others.
Uh, the price is not important, what matters is feature set. One of the issues with the price is that Autodesk owns both Maya and 3dsmax, so they pretty much can charge whatever they want.
"Smoother workflow" is subjective, you'd need to compare individual features.
You use whatever tools allow you to accomplish what you need to get done. As a professional in a studio, you'll either work with Maya or 3DS Max. It really depends on what tools that studio has built their pipeline around. I've worked at studios that used Max and some that used Maya. Back in the days of old, 3DS Max was more common in the gaming industry and Maya was used more so in the VFX film industry. Today that distinction is mostly gone as games and film have merged quite a bit since the old days.
Naughty Dog, Namco, Epic, Polyphony, Core, Square, EA, Nihilistic, SCEA, Vivendi Universal, Midway, Insomniac and many more use or used Maya in their pipelines for production.

Epic Games, Harmonix, Eidos, Ubisoft, Remedy Entertainment, Blur, High Moon, Mythic, Neversoft, Monolith, Digital Extremes, Bioware, Blizzard, and many more use or have used 3DS Max in their pipelines.

(I've taken this data from the Autodesk Customer pages by the way)

So what should you take away from this as a game development professional in this industry? In order to be viable in today's market you should probably have a solid understanding of both of these packages. This really applies to those who have a desire to work in a larger studio with a team on a shipped console title. One thing you'll notice once you get hired in a studio, that they don't tell you in a job description: These studios usually have licenses of Maya and 3DS Max on the workstations and you're free to create content in whichever you like, providing you do your final exports in the format their tools/engine accepts.

As for the indie developers, the tool is really agnostic...Blender, Maya, 3DS Max, Modo, who cares, you're making the call on what software or tool you need to get the job done. I think a lot of indie folks choose Blender because it's free and not too difficult to learn. Maya LT is a great resource as well, and very cheap for what it provides. For an indie developer it provides more than enough tools to get the job done.

Last edited: Sep 19, 2016
You seem to have a very good overview of the differences between the different tools. Could you give examples of things that are better in Maya LT than in Blender? I'm genuinely curious and not trying to defend Blender here, I just don't know much about Maya LT. In Blender until a short while ago it wasn't possible to manually edit vertex normals (big deal for game art). Now it is kind of possible with modifiers, but I'd describe the solution as "less than ideal". How is that in Maya LT? Also how does MayaLT compare to Blender's modifiers when it comes to non-destructive modeling workflows? Anything else that MayaLT can do better than Blender?
I forgot to add my own personal experience with both. I use Max and Maya and am an expert user of both. Maya is superior to most packages for it's animation and rigging tools. Animation in 3DS Max is a royal pain in the ass. Mocap and rigs in 3DS Max are a breeze to set up, and awesome, but once you get to editing keyframes or curves it's a living hell in comparison to Maya. In Maya, keyframe editing and curves are simple and intuitive, just awesome. 3DS Max is superior as a pure modeling tool. Maya modeling frustrates a lot of new modelers. If you use Maya to model you better know how to use the hotbox and shortcuts to be speedy and proficient. 3DS Max's stack modifier is just beyond anything Maya provides (it has a really poor "history" stack that really isn't editable without destroying things). In 3DS Max you can literally model all sorts of things with just the modifier stack, not even physically touching the mesh in the viewport. As an example building rocks with noise modifiers, lattice modifiers, etc. Maya really doesn't have much like that and it's Modeling Toolkit pales in comparison to 3DS Max's Graphite Modeling tools. I do find that it's faster to do UVs in Maya as well, 3DS Max UVs require a few more steps. Painting or sculpting models in Maya is also a bit better and more robust than 3DS Max.
So my two cents? Maya for the animation win. 3DS Max for the modeling win.

This is an example of the power of 3DS Max as a modeling tool:

Last edited: Sep 19, 2016
I never used maya Lt, but maya proper had full normal editing where you can split normals and also define per vertex face their facings. Even to this day in blender dealing with normals and vertex colour is a pain.
Maya does not have a modifier stack like max or blender, but it does have its history nodes and you can go back and edit most operations after applying them.

As far as core modeling tools i would say max has a edge, but i still prefer maya for the whole workflow. It has very good rigging and animation tools, and its pymel Python scripting interface makes it a ideal to build your content pipeline around and for creating purpose built tools for your games and artists.
Whatever you use please..if you work with other devs, make the Y axis be up, the Z axis forward and the X axis to the right or left side..depending on the handedness of the app.
Good catch. 3DS Max is Z Up world, Maya is Y Up world. Best to match the world vectors for the engine everyone is working in. In this case it would be Unity, so we would want a Y Up world! Thanks for bringing up a very good point.
I gave up with Blender some time ago after doing a month trial with Maya LT. I'm not an artist but I often need to open and modify stuff people send (fbx) me and Blender just was messy to work with certain files and in general cause of having the UI jungle. Seems that a lot of the Unity scene hotkeys and stuff are identical with Maya so it's a lot more pleasant to use. Now I can also quickly ask the artists or show them screenshots from Maya instead of trying to figure things myself with Blender. Already probably saved almost half of the annual subscription price when calculated in work time costs.
On topic, as far as I know most of the people I have worked with have used Maya.
There's a reason for this The founders of Unity were Maya users and designed it that way purposefully.
Actually, yeah, if someone needs fbx support, then not using blender makes a lot of sense. Modifying *.fbx in blender pretty much requires a sacrifice in the name of cthulhu, if the model is skinned.
Support for data interchange seems to be quite poor. A while ago I spent a bit of time trying to get skinned model into blender, and could do it neither with collada nor with fbx import, even using alternative fbx importer - the process simply resulted in distortions, misplaced bones, and other fun things. As far as I can tell, the best way to get an fbx into blender is to grab fbx sdk and write a plugin from scratch.

Then again, it might not even be blender's fault - there simply wasn't a good exchange format for 3d data, so fbx took its place.
and the alt+(lmb/mmb/rmb) is pretty much the most used layout for viewport navigation anywyas
Use the tools which you like to use the most, and that you can be most efficient and creative in.
The 'best' software is really so subjective -
Its all about the skill and ability of the artist - not the software.
I'm a Max artist, and agree with most everything @JamesArndt said. Since I've worked in Max, pretty exclusively for over 15 years I have my own workflow and I'm sure I'm able to do anything another artist can do in any other 3D package.
Initially I found editing keyframes and curves in Max a little cumbersome, but worked through the difficulties and found a workflow that works great for me. Time dedicated to any software will make any competent artist able to overcome any workflow difficulty.
If your planning to go into movies - focus on Maya, although there are some (very few) studios who still use Max. Blur Studios - the awesome studio that develops nearly every 'awesome' cg trailer for most games still uses Max to develop content, though I think some of the animators now use Maya.

If you are planning to join the game industry, Maya or Max is pretty interchangeable, though some studios have there pipeline in place and all new hires will have to be proficient working in the software they have in house.
I remember the unity ceo saying this yeah that some of the artists they worked with in the early days of unity were very much maya fans, and so they ended up making shortcuts and camera stuff very similar to that of maya so the artists could get S*** done otherwise they wouldn't .. I can only say i wish they had gone further in following maya.
I don't think there is anything maya isn't good for especially for game dev, while 3dsmax is good I could never go back after using maya for so many years, alot of the strength for using 3dsmax is from the third party plugins to me and it does have lot more library stuff for archvis. It's just that maya provides a much more solid base (3dsmax grid snapping eerf its always been complete junk)

Anyway I tried blender today... i hate it, its not the interface style (it looks slick, and I'm sure if I could be bothered to find some tutorial to go through what everything does it would make some more sense) and its not the lack of features its definitely packed in some good stuff... its just the complete total lack of thought put into the workflow and polish on the small things.. its complete S*** like so many areas that just feel unpolished and half baked, I guess you can't complain for free, and for what it is, it makes the gimp developers look like complete goons comparing what they would have to do to match upto photoshop. Blender compares pretty favourable to competitor products.

As as an example blenders movement manipulates are trash, no direct way of translating on 2d axis plane, the scale manipulator doesn't have a way to prevent negative scaling, these are just tiny issues, but when you add up all tiny issues just for modelling workflow.. it sucks, but sure you'll still get things done eventually. I think blender probably needs some professional to come in a make a dedicated plugin that polishes up alot of its S*** areas. I don't have a lot of interest in scraping through scripts and finding everything needed to make blender less bad. Maybe like a complete overhaul. kinda like the nex modelling toolkit that autodesk bought up for maya and integrated a couple of years ago, I used it many years prior to that and it took maya modelling workflow to whole n'uther level. I can see that happening in the coming years for blender and gimp, they will get better and pretty much bridge the gap compared to professional suites, while subscription fees for the big boy products are going to have to get a reevaluation. I mean the subscription for photoshop compared to the subscription fee of a gimped version of maya lt.. pretty bad of Autowreck.
Uh oh this has turned into another fanboy software vs software thread.
Thanks a lot for all the info everyone! I use the modifier stack in Blender quite heavily. If Maya LT doesn't have something on par or above, that might be the dealbreaker for me already. Better vertex normal editing than in Blender would be cool, but the modifier stack is easily 50 times as important to me. If I ever had to pick an Autodesk 3D solution it seems it would have to be 3DSMax then. The scripting features aren't included in MayaLT though, right? What exactly do you mean with "direct way"? I'm not trying to change your opinion on Blender, but to move something on one of the three 2D planes you can either use the shortcuts 1, 3, 7 on the numpad to align the view to front, side or top, and then press G to move something on the 2D plane you are looking at. Or you can press G and then shift+z (or x or y) to limit the movement to the xy plane. G and then z limits it to the z axis.
Are you looking for something with 1 less click?
With "manipulators" do you mean the 3-arrows-thing that lives in the 3D viewport? When they introduced that feature, I was already so used to the hotkeys-only workflow, that I thought "Who would ever need such a thing? Why did they even add this?". Nowadays I do use it sometimes, but generally Blender is designed to be used "keyboard heavy" I think. I almost never go looking for something in menues. Instead I press space and use the search field, and when I use something often enough I'll start using the shortcut instead. It's displayed in those search results too and sometimes I use that just to look up hotkeys for a function. It can get hard to memorize everything because there are so many shortcuts.
I use MayaLT, I think it's great personally.. HumanIK / blendshape system and normal transfers are a couple of clicks and very accurate compared to that wierd projection matrix's some editors do. It's easy to find everything tap space or use hot keys..
You of course can do scripting in Maya LT, it uses Mel.. I use it all the time for joint orientations etc. It even in 2017 has a proper scene view that was kind of lacking. It has sculpting tools, it has a really good automatic re-topology tool that doesn't screw with your UV maps. It has a decent normal editing system via "unlocks" most of it you can just shift the smoothing angle and / or select the surface type (hard / soft) / align it if you want. It's catmul implementation is decent, which is easily previewed by pressing 1,2,3.. Then once your done you convert the view to mesh polygon's you can even work in nurbs then "compile" down to quad polys..

Unlike some other DCC's, it has a proper deformer system where you can keep quad's position and bend specific's, like if you had a slopey building, you can just curve it in the centre without affecting anything else. Maya LT started off a little shaky but by the 2017 version, gotta admit I'm very impressed. If you use Unreal / Unity then you can of course export the full shabang, also to mention it's one of the few export pipelines (.FBX) I never have issues with..

It has a visual material editor (like shaderforge kinda thing), which isn't too bad.

Good cleanup tools, if you have NGON's etc. you can mark polygon issues then go in with the quick toolset to weld verts etc. It's selection camera tools are easy.. The list goes on and on..

Oh just to mention, it's the only DCC I know of with a proper Physx implementation.. You can use cloth etc. inside the editor and just export as it was set up.

In short Maya LT is like the Unity of DCC's, it's simple, quick and effective to use. I never really got along with blender, but I do use it from time to time with addon's, I just use the Maya template for input anyway..

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 20, 2016
Thanks for the info!Oh, nice. Didn't know that. I might have confused it with the Modo indie version. I remember there being a discussion on Polycount about the steam version of some modelling tool missing scripting. In Blender I usually just leave a triangulate modifier on the meshes to get rid of ngons on export.What usecases are left for Blender that your other programs don't cover? Something like city-generator scripts etc. that were written for Blender maybe?
i never used maya LT but i hear it still has mel support. But MEL is pretty terrible to work with compared to the full power offered by the 3 available python APIS maya has, and its C++ API if you need the extra speed.
Yep, spot on.. I used to use Blender for procedural scripting and extensions but nowadays I tend to use Houdini as it's far more powerful.
As for "modifier" stacks, well it depends what you're doing.. It does have a "none" desctructive workflow, well until you delete it all and reset / freeze transforms. If you want to add a noise modifier for example you can deform meshes by using a noise mask object > create texture deform for example. Then remove it from the history "stack", it's kind of a similar sorta thing really..

If we're going down the "super tools" avenue with proc works, multi-stacks etc., to do complex scene's then there's tools out there better than Max / Maya and Blender combined.

aer0ace and Martin_H like this.
yes.. in maya they are called plane handles

originally from Nex plugin aswel, much quicker to directly manipulate, no need to switch camera views or align perspective camera to a specific direction in order to manip a selection in any of the 3 axis plane directions. I get the feeling blender makes a lot of extra hotkeys to make up for a lack of more polished design probably could do with more context hotkey menus really, for me keyboard shortcuts around wasd are most prized area for invoking commonly used things, any hotkeys outside of that area are dead useless to me as it should be quicker to access via mouse instead then. I know blender has some context sensitive menus, but its severely lacking in overall polish for workflow and featureset, I think even modo which is a step ahead in modelling tools compared to blender but then that is a commercial product aswel.

I guess it won't be long until someone puts together an enhancement plugin for Blender for a much more polished workflow enhancement to things like modelling, but then they would probably want to sell it but I don't follow Blender community or roadmap, maybe there is good scripts and mods to make it better.
Max had partial Physx from 2008 - 2012. In 2013 or 2014 Max gained full Physx integration - and it's AWESOME!
Was envious of Maya for a couple years cause of that. The half-assed Havok Reactor plug-in always sucked, was convoluted and backwards, and was extremely limiting in features and scope. Of the many limitations a soft body dynamic object could only be 5000 triangles or lower, and could only interact with hard bodies that were 2500 triangles or lower. Other limitations which were just mind numbing to work within. Physx in Max is a godsend, although I must confess I haven't used it as often as I should. I just got used to working around the limitations of previous systems and setting up stuff manually with built-in Max tools - and hand animating certain things. IMO - Maya LT is an awesome offering. Essentially a top of the line, pro modeler, texturer and animator for a light monthly fee.
Without two notable tools, rendering (right?) and paint FX, neither of which anyone needs to develop assets for games.
Yeah you are right, last time I properly used max was around 2012.. I had a small stint with Max2016 but that was to test out a plugin called ghost town.
Then I had a stint with Modo which didn't take, reason I mainly use Maya has to be for the character / animation and rigging tools. It's a difficult task at the best of times, which you need something pretty straight forward to get quick / decent results..

I still need to find something to speed up UV mapping, this applies to any DCC I've used. Don't get me wrong, there are some really cool tools like Unfold3D and let's say if you make a pipe with flow's unitizing (which maps all poly's into a grid for UV's) is damn sweet. Still not exactly a quick process by any means though, I was tempted to try 3Dcoat for those duties but never got around to it.

In all fairness, it's one of those areas I probably pay too much attention to. I played TLOU the other day, like on a fireplace etc. there were seams right down the back / front split.. If you have a tons of meshes and / or use not repeating (tiled NM) materials with macro variations, you can't really tell.. Well unless you stand there looking for it..
If you find one please share!! I've played around with several stand alone unwrappers. Roadkill showed promise but was never followed up on with updates. It's still available in the same form it was in when I tried it about 10 years ago.
Might consider checking out a couple videos on the new (I can't remember the name) pelting tool in Max. It came out in Max 2017 and there are several videos and people who were praising it as if it was the "click to unwrap all" button. Honestly I didn't see much difference in it to the previous tools, but I guess it's a new algorithm that is supposed to make unwraps just better.
Also Mudbox has a new tool in the latest version - I haven't tried it out and don't have specifics but I made a point to go back to it to check it out. (other priorities right!) I've watched several videos and have been tempted also - more than once. I have the demo sitting on my desktop. I think I'm going to check it out soon - and maybe Santa might deliver a digital gift this year!
There's a lot of thought put into workflow, it is just that you need to take your previous maya/max experience, throw it out of the window, learn the hotkeys and avoid trying to work through gui.After pressing "G" (grab/move), press Shift +X to constraint to YZ plane, Shift + Y to constraint to XZ and shift + Z to constraint to XY. (Shift is for the one of the axes you don't want to move in).
Since on your screen you're pointing with mouse at manipulator widget then you obviously are trying to use blender wrong.

Nobody sane would use manipulator gizmo in blender, because it is slow and inefficient. I haven't used any of those gizmos in years. You use hotkeys for movement/manipulation, and hotkeys for constraints and hotkeys for everything else. When you don't remember a hotkey, you can press space, bring up search menu and type there. Forget about fancy gui buttons and pointing at manipulator handles with mouse. This is not how blender is supposed to be used. Learn the hotkeys.
Funny that you say that when your were the first one to reply here and dismissed both apps said in the original question and suggested Blender which OP did not even mention